Demand-based messaging is a communication service that allows people to exchange message data, such as text, over a network or other communications media, in real time. Probably the most common medium for exchange is the Internet, but as wireless phone networks continue to expand, their popularity for text messaging is also expanding. U.S. Pat. No. 6,301,609 issued to Aravamudun et al., and U.S. Patent Publications Nos. 2002/0035605 and 2004/0254998, for example, illustrate the move toward an exchange medium that unifies traditional and wireless communications. Instant messaging (IM) is one widely known and used embodiment of demand-based messaging. Today, most network and online service providers offer some form of IM service. According to some estimates, the top three instant messaging service providers serve over forty million users. Instant messaging services also are being rapidly deployed and integrated into enterprise infrastructure. International Business Machines, Inc. (IBM), for example, has deployed LOTUS SAMETIME instant messaging applications for employees world-wide. Other examples of IM applications that are popular today include MSN Messenger and Yahoo/AOL Instant Messenger.
IM users typically use a networked computer and an IM client program to exchange messages with one another in conversational style. An IM client provides an interface for users to compose, send, receive, and read messages. In a graphical display, an IM client usually includes at least two windows: a window for composing and sending messages, and a window for displaying messages as users take turns sending and receiving them. IM sessions (colloquially referred to as “chats”) are often lengthy, with multiple participants each taking many turns “speaking” in the chat window. Each turn or entry is referred to herein as a “conversation element”.
As with any conversation, an IM session often consists of a series of questions, answers and comments over multiple topics. Replies to a question may have multiple responses from the same participant, because it is common to break up long thoughts into several conversation elements. Each conversation element displays instantly, in chronological sequence as each conversation element is written. When there are more than two participants in an IM session, responses to a question from the multiple participants may visually interrupt each other. An interruption can cause even further confusion when the interruption relates to a different topic than the prior and subsequent conversation elements in the sequence.
Other forms of electronic communication, such as newsgroups, handle the problem of interruptions and asynchronous responses by threading conversation topics. In a newsgroup, each conversation element, or “posting” is handled like email. The postings are sent to a common server, where participants, or “subscribers,” can create, read and respond to postings. Newsgroup postings contain extensive header information, like an email, that contain subject lines, sender information, server routing information and time and date stamps. Newsgroup software uses the header information for routing the posting to the proper server for storage and access by subscribers to the newsgroup. Each original conversation element is assigned a topic in a subject line. Responses to the original conversation element are handled like the “reply to all” function in an email. Related conversation elements are visually assembled below the original conversation element in threads.
The threading mechanism employed by newsgroup software, though, does not lend itself to the real-time nature of IM. IM conversation elements do not contain the extensive header information used by newsgroups to organize postings by threads because IM systems employ an active open electronic connection between participating nodes. IM conversation elements generally do not require all the header information since the routing of the electronic communication is already established when the IM session starts.
Accordingly, a need exists for a system and method for managing threaded conversation elements of an IM session.